


Digging for Truth

by CZGoldEdition



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix It Fic, Root is Alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 20:45:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12307428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CZGoldEdition/pseuds/CZGoldEdition
Summary: Sameen Shaw cannot accept Root's death: this must be another simulation.





	Digging for Truth

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this while the last season of Person of Interest was airing, because Root is my TV wife and I WAS VERY UPSET.
> 
> At the point when I wrote this, I hadn't penned any fan fiction in over seven years, so. Pardon my dust as I climb back up on the prose horse. Debating whether or not I should house any of my older fanfiction here as well, some of it is... well, I'll think about it.
> 
> But for now, a drabble. ♥

**_Digging for Truth_**  
  
Simulations never dragged on so long. This was a new level of sadism – subtler, and all the more infuriating for it. From Samaritan, Sameen Shaw expected nothing less. A faint, persistent panic fluttered in Shaw’s belly, like a half-dead, trapped bird throwing itself against the walls of its cage.

In the past thousands of instances, Shaw invariably woke up after killing herself on the playground. Now, she lingered on the metal roundabout for hours, slowly rotating, leaning against the outer bars and staring past the horizon. Occasionally her hands would meander from the pockets of her pants to the front pouch of her tightly zipped hoodie to grasp at the handle of her concealed carry. For hours, she considered pressing the hand gun to her temple and releasing herself from this sick joke, but she didn’t much want to start the simulation over again, either.

Shaw was tired. Ending her own life seven thousand times was one thing; experiencing Root’s death more than once would be another entirely.

Tucked into herself as she was, the compact woman simply stood, ignoring children playing around her and questions from passersby. That no one called the cops on a strange adult loitering wordlessly in a youth play area gave credence to her theory. Sameen clutched tighter to the SIG she kept lying in wait, tensing the muscles in her arm, ready to draw. Maybe she could change it, truly escape next time. She’d been so sure. But this? This couldn’t be reality. Shaw wouldn’t accept it.

She made her decision.

The former ISA operative’s trained ears picked up recognizably solid footfalls, and she hissed internally as Reese rotated into view.

“What do you want?”

———————————————

Reese and the Machine dragged her on another meaningless mission. (Numbers. Why numbers? Why did Shaw care who lived and who died, here? This wasn’t even happening, it couldn’t be.) “Feel real yet?” Reese had asked her as they knelt in temporary surrender, surrounded by armed secret service men. The consequent punches she landed and the recoil from her gunfire had felt real enough, but so had those in simulations past. So had other things.

She thought about Root’s body, writhing beneath her hands and tongue, warm to the touch. Root’s breath, hot against her neck. Thousands of times, each more realistic than the last.

Shaw felt like she was cracking. She needed to find her safe place. Maybe the playground alone wouldn’t suffice to end this fucked up excuse for a timeline – she needed Root.

050313\. Numbers. Sameen stared at them blankly in the failing light of dusk. Numbers to the left and right, too. 048629. 051427. Anonymous correspondents to some coronery database. The grave markers were otherwise featureless, like – Shaw thought – her feelings. The small, muscular woman clenched her fist, fresh rage filling her senses. Root deserved more. Some mild recognition, at least. Not for working tirelessly to save them all from some overzealous ASI, of course, the world couldn’t know that. But Root deserved recognition for her brilliance, for her energy. For the life that number inadequately conveyed.

Root deserved more from Shaw. She wished for the ability to cry, though she never had.

When the last threads of crimson and violet faded from the horizon, shovel struck dirt and Shaw dug for answers. She’d wrestled with the disrespect this entailed, even for a simulated grave, but ultimately decided the nondescript cemetery plot to be an inherently greater offense. When metal thudded against wood, Shaw cast the tool aside, hopping several feet into the earth to finish ripping away the loose dirt with her bare hands, anger mounting at the simple wooden crate her efforts had uncovered.

After clearing the top and a sufficient pocket of space around the coffin, Shaw jammed a crowbar under the lid’s edge… and hesitated. The heft of the crowbar in her hands felt to Sameen like that of her concealed SIG yesterday morning. She breathed heavily, coated in a generous layer of dirt and sweat, her head spinning as though she still stood on the merry-go-round.

Shaw’s biceps flexed and a sharp cracking sound declared the coffin’s seal broken, the noise partially muffled by the surrounding walls of dirt on its way into the night air above. She crouched beside the box, inhaled, and tilted up the lid.

Aside from the fluffy purple and black lining and a single slip of paper, the crate stood empty. Directionless adrenaline rushed through Shaw as she reached down for the scrap of wild hope.

 _Sorry, sweetie_ , said the paper in Root’s tidy hand, _Places to be, people to kill. Don’t tell Harry. She said you might look, and I hoped so. Keep that shape of yours safe until I can return mine to you._

For the first time in days, Shaw felt real. Filthy, aching, _alive_ ; clutching a little piece of paper next to an absurdly fake fur lined casket that looked as though it were designed by a goddamn teenager. Still angry, but the feeling had been transmuted into something lighter, a familiar annoyance.

“Dammit Root,” the exhausted woman breathed, but felt an incredulous grin tug at the corners of her mouth. Shaw brushed stray specs dirt from the paper absently, almost lovingly. Shaking her head, she folded the message, tucked it into her bra, and began the process of restoring the false grave.


End file.
